If cloud computing is going to be as ubiquitous as some of the analysts and commentators believe, then the future is going to be very different from previous projections.
Professor Peter Cochrane is a business angel, futurologist and former chief technology officer of BT. He sees cloud as becoming universal. "We are moving from a world of you and I online to everything online," he says. Machines already exchange a lot more information than human beings do on this planet and this will continue to increase, he adds. "We're talking about all vehicles, all items you purchase, being part of the cloud."
This means the ability to record locations of materials but also the use of sensors, he says. "An example would be nanosensors which are more sensitive than a dog's nose, which can detect a single molecule of a substance." Attached to a cloud full of knowledge about what a particular substance could do, the applications for diagnostics and other scientific applications are myriad. Sensors with their data in the cloud could also handle things such as payments, he adds – in Korea, for example, when a bank issues a credit card they ask the customer if they want plastic or just the data loaded on to their phone. A sensor will detect the phone and handle the rest and record their transactions into a cloud system.
Business users will find their use of the cloud changes dramatically. A report from IT consultants Xantus, entitled A Clearer Horizon? Do CIOs have More Clarity About Cloud Computing? suggests 98% of chief information officers have investigated cloud services, a quarter are using them already and that will rise to 73% within two years. That said, 86% say the term is being used to sell them goods and services without any real definition of what it means other than "please sign this requisition order".
Cloud might grow at different paces in different niches: Leslie Ferry, vice president of marketing at voice over IP communication specialists BroadSoft, sees it very much as something to be adopted by the communications industry. "Enterprises want to move rapidly beyond offering just voice communications to include other unified communications services such as video calling and conferencing, web collaboration tools and enterprise instant messaging," she says. "And the most efficient way to deploy and manage these new communication options across a dispersed workforce is through cloud-based services."
Reality will bite, however. The strength of the cloud is that it is multinational, of course; this has its drawbacks too. Steve Durbin, global vice president of independent body the Information Security Forum, says there is work to be done. "Every country has a different legal framework – especially around information, privacy and IT-based crime," he says. "Suppliers of services need to be able to reconcile conflicting requirements – in people, process, technology and law or regulation at both a local and global level." John Soanes, head of architecture at technology company Adapt, adds that cloud services don't sit well with all software licences as they stand at the moment.
Available bandwidth
There are simpler practicalities, too. Terry Walby, UK managing director of cloud provider IPsoft, finds that when people take on cloud services they assume it's going to manage itself. "It's shocking to see how management has been forgotten within cloud solutions," he says. "Businesses could spend thousands of pounds or waste hundreds of man hours if they deploy cloud solutions without considering management." Cochrane is concerned not only about the management of bandwidth but the sheer amount of bandwidth available in the UK; it's not enough, he says, and places like Korea are going to overtake us very rapidly.
There's no doubt that cloud could transform the world and make life a great deal easier for many people. The only issue is that the pipework that underpins it – particularly in the UK – has to be up to the challenge.
